Already Fighting

I ended up having to isolate a couple of our mice this morning after they came into the store -as we got a new shipment of them delivered in today.

But unfortunately, as it does happen between the mice--at least the male mice, idk about the females as I never get them in....
The male mice will sometimes decide that they don't like their buddies that are in the cage with them.
And will begin fighting.

It doesn't always happen.
But recently it feels like it does. 

*exhales*

I could hear them squeaking as soon as the guy brought the boxes in the store.

But I'd hoped that they would mellow out.

However, after checking on them once the delivery guy left...

I noticed that there was blood on the base of the tail of one and saw another mouse attacking the injured one.

So to isolation it went, being placed in a separate cage where we could monitor it and make sure that the wounds would heal.

Only as I was checking in on the remaining two....
I noticed that a second one too was also showing signs of blood and wounds.

*exhales*

So instead of having one cage of three mice.
I now have three cages with one mouse in each of them. 

And two of them won't be able to come out onto the floor until their little wounds are healed.

Thankfully our isolation room is rather empty at the moment.
So it wasn't that big of a deal to isolate them.

I only hope that they heal quickly....and that we sell through the mice a little quicker than normal because mice don't always sell that well here in my store.
So it could be a while before I'm able to bring them out to sell as I can only bring them out to the floor to sell to customers if the mice already on the floor get sold.

So yah. That's gonna be fun.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Counting Ever Counting

It was another teaching moment for my new manager today. 
As it was time for us to do our animal count.
Where we count all the animals in the store that aren't the fish we counted earlier in the week.

Though apparently my old manager -who's switched to a different manager position- hadn't known that we'd picked my new manager to be my new manager?
*shakes head*

They really need to work on their communication lines with each other. 

In any case.
My old manager was nearly going to start the animal count because they were unaware that the new manager had already been chosen. 

So I had to stop them from doing the count so that I would be able to teach my new manager how to do it when they came in for their shift a little later in the day.

In many ways I think it went a little better than the fish count did.
Lol mostly because it's easier to count cages where there's only like one hamster or two lizards in them than fish tanks that have like twenty fish moving all over the place. XD lol. 

Though unsurprisingly, my new manager did struggle with counting one particular creature.

The crickets.

Which considering we can have anywhere from none up to like 4 or 5 thousand of them....

Isn't surprising.

They're not easy to count.

Though I did try to show my manager my way of counting them.
Where I would take guesstimate a group of about ten crickets. And then just go around counting by tens in the cricket container until I had covered the entire area.

My manager didn't catch on quite as well.
As I'd done a quick count and gotten like 600 crickets.

And somehow they'd ended up with like...4,000. O.o 

Still not sure how they got that number beyond counting the entire container like six times. 
Or maybe they switched to counting each indivdiual cricket as a 'ten' instead?

No idea.

But that was the only slight hiccup in the counting department today.

Otherwise I think they did rather well for their first time. 

Though it will probably still take them some time to get the hang of it. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Counted Twice

I had a customer come into the store wanting sixty goldfish.
Which isn't that big of a deal for me to catch.
But apparently I can catch the fish a lot faster than my coworkers.
Not really surprising considering I've been working here for like 7 years while most of my associates have been here under a year lol.
But it does feel nice to be validated with my skills every now and then. ^^;;

In any case.
I managed to catch the 60 goldfish quickly--more quickly than my coworkers, apparently the customer has had to wait 45 minutes before to get all their fish caught. O.o?? Not sure why it would take so long...but yikes. 

In any case...
because the customer was talking to me at the same time I was counting.
I wasn't sure I had gotten the right number.
So as I poured the fish into the bag...I counted them again.

And was like "oh, I'm two short, hold on." And grabbed two more for the customer so they wouldn't be paying for fish they didn't have.

And the customer was like ()_() you just counted them again?! You counted so quickly!! You must be good at math!!

Lol. 
^^;; Yes? And No. I like math in a sense.
Hated Calculus...specifically the tests because I kept failing those but without the tests and such, I do like working with numbers. Figuring out problems and such. Though most problems I solve are sudoku based or counting things at the store. ^^;; lol

But yah. Nice to have people be impressed with my skills. ^^;; 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Teaching Again

So, I have a new manager.

As my previous manager decided to step down and switch to a different position in the store. 

Which means...
With the new manager knowing very little about how my department runs.

I'm once again put back in the position of playing teacher to my manager lol.

Basically showing them how the department works and how to do the counts and such.

Today was our fish count day.
Which meant teaching my manager how to count the fish.

Which I thought was a rather simple process.

Scan the fish tag, count the fish, add or subtract the difference in the scanner, move onto the next tank.

But then again.
I've been counting the fish for like...the past 7 years. 

So maybe I had a similar struggle when I first started.

Though I feel like I didn't struggle that much...

But teaching my new manager?

Yah...I'm thinking it will take at least two or three more times before the manager gets it....

Hopefully they get it quicker than the other manager did, as I feel like it took them a while to catch on.

*shakes head*

Time will tell.
But yah.
I thought it could be like a quick five to fifteen minute teaching moment.
But no, I spent like forty minutes or so repeating myself again and again and again as the manager was having some slight issues remembering which buttons to hit in which order. 

Hopefully they were able to manage after I left for the day....

-Sarnic Dirchi

The Circle of Life

It's always interesting what ends up surprising customers when it comes to animal care. 

Today I had a father come into the store with his son to get crickets.

Only his son had wandered away.

So when I asked the Father what size of crickets he needed....he had no idea.

*shakes head*

I do wonder what people are thinking when they come into the store for crickets but then don't know anything beyond that they need crickets. They don't know size. Don't know number. If I ask them if they want small or large they inevitably answer 'medium' which I don't carry. 

It's like they come in expecting us to already know what they need and have it ready for them.

In any case.

He had to go find his son.

Who wasn't certain either what size of crickets he needed for his lizard either.

*exhales*

A few more questions and we decided that they probably wanted small crickets.

And a couple more questions established that the boy wanted like 20 of them. 

After I bagged them up.

The boy asked. "How long will these live?" 

And I was like "Probably a week, depends on how well you feed them."

And the dad was like: "You have to feed the crickets to feed to the lizard?! That's crazy!"

O.o

Uh...no it's like....the circle of life?

Crickets are living creatures that need to eat to well...live.

It's just like a rabbit eating plants and then a hawk eating the rabbit.

Food is fed to the crickets which then the crickets are fed to the lizard.

Honestly though, that's not the first time I've had customers be surprised that the crickets have to be fed too to help them survive longer.

For whatever reason...it doesn't compute when it comes to the bugs. *shakes head*

-Sarnic Dirchi

Bye Bye Jello

So we've had this sweet kitty named Jello in our store for a couple of months now.

As he apparently got adopted out...but then was returned...and then just sat there as all the other kitties around him were adopted out left and right.

Which was sad. Because like I said he's sweet.
He loves to play with his fuzzy balls, and to just climb right up onto your lap and lay there.

I honestly enjoyed spending some time with him each morning just stroking him and scratching his ears after I finished cleaning out his cage.

But still.
Everyone in the store was rooting for him to find a forever home.
Because again, he's so sweet.

And today.
Today he finally got adopted!
Woot!

Everyone in the store was so excited for this bit of news.

And we kept repeating it to each other throughout the rest of my shift whenever something else happened. -usually when something less good happened.

"Jello Got Adopted." 

Yay kitty!
I hope this home is one that you enjoy. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Cones

Had a customer come into the store today looking for a dog cone for her dog.

Which was simple enough to point out. 
Though like most customers they don't 'see' the dog cones the first time around as they don't expect them to be where they're at so you have to reshow them where the cones are again.

But in any case.

The customer had a...unique concern with the dog cone.

In that she wanted to make sure the dog could go into their dog igloo with the cone on.

Which is...not one I've heard before.

But apparently the dog is quite energetic and just likes to dart into things. Bolt right in full hearted and such.

So we ended up going to the dog igloo of the size she wanted in the store.
And folding the cone up to the largest and smallest sizes we figured out that the dog would have plenty of space to come in and out.

So she decided to go with the cone.
But also.

She wanted the dogloo too.

Which I was surprised by as I was under the impression she already had one.
Apparently she didn't.

So I had the 'fun' task of trying to get the giant thing onto a cart by myself because it was just me and the manager in the store at that moment and the manager was on register ringing up other customers. 

So yah.
Fun times. So much fun times.

And I went basically from helping that customer with a cone issue....

To another customer who also was looking for a cone for her doggie.

Because he had stitches in his foot and needed a cone around his head to prevent him from pulling out the stitches for two weeks while it healed.

Only...they had gone through 3 cones in three days.

O.o

The dog had managed to snap them/break them basically destroy them.

By apparently running into things and just breaking them.

And the customer was looking for a different method as they didn't want to keep buying cones.

I ended up pointing her to our fabric cones that are a bit more durable because they're more flexible.
but they're like twice as expensive as the plastic versions.

So she was looking for something...that cost less.

So I went over to our vet to get their opinion on if there was any other method.

There wasn't.
Fabric cone was what they recommended as well. 

The customer ended up reluctantly buying the cone.

But I told her that if it didn't work we did have a return policy.
Which helped her feel better about the cost.

*fingers crossed* that it works for her puppy dog. 

-Sarnic Dirchi